1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to refrigerators and, more particularly, to a refrigerator which has a home bar and is designed to automatically and smoothly open a home bar door to open or close the home bar provided in a door of a refrigerator compartment.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is well known to those skilled in the art, a refrigerator is an electrical appliance which supplies cool air of low temperature into a freezer compartment and a refrigerator compartment, thus keeping various kinds of food fresh. The freezer compartment stores the food which must be stored below a freezing temperature, such as meat and ice cream. The refrigerator compartment stores food which must be stored at a temperature slightly higher than the freezing temperature, such as vegetables and beverages.
Recently, a large-capacity refrigerator has been marketed and widely used which stores a large quantity of food, thus increasing convenience of use for users. The large-capacity refrigerator has a side-by-side structure. That is, the freezer compartment is provided on the left side of the refrigerator while the refrigerator compartment is provided on the right side of the refrigerator.
Further, a refrigerator has been marketed such that a water dispenser is provided on a door of the freezer compartment and a home bar is provided on a door of the refrigerator compartment, thus increasing convenience for the users, preventing cool air from escaping out of the refrigerator and preventing external air from flowing into the refrigerator due to frequent opening and closing of the doors of the freezer and refrigerator compartments.
The home bar is provided in the door of the refrigerator compartment to store the food which is used frequently, such as a beverage, e.g., wine and/or beer. The home bar is designed to have a storage chamber, thus allowing a user to conveniently access a bottle stored in the storage chamber without the necessity of opening the door of the refrigerator compartment. A home bar door is mounted to the door of the refrigerator compartment to open or close the home bar.
Generally, the home bar door is provided on an outer surface of the door of the refrigerator compartment, and covers an opening formed in the door of the refrigerator compartment to communicate with the home bar. In this case, the home bar door is hinged, at sides of a lower end thereof, to respective corners of a lower edge of the opening. Two folding connecting arms are mounted to the sides of the home bar door so as to allow the home bar door to be folded or unfolded. The arms connect the home bar door to side edges of the opening formed in the door of the refrigerator compartment, thus allowing the home bar door to be folded or unfolded to close or to open the opening.
The folding connecting arms, connecting the home bar door to the side edges of the opening of the door of the refrigerator compartment, are rotatably hinged. Two links of each of the folding connecting arms are connected to each other by a coil spring, so that the two links are folded by an elastic force of the coil spring. Thus, a rotating force is applied to the home bar door by the coil springs of the folding connecting arms in a direction of closing the opening of the door of the refrigerator compartment.
However, the conventional refrigerator having the home bar door constructed in this way has a problem that the home bar door is designed to be opened or closed by stretching or folding the folding connecting arms, so the home bar door is not automatically opened but manually opened, thus being inconvenient to use.
Further, the conventional refrigerator having the home bar has another problem that a force of a predetermined magnitude must be applied to the home bar door to overcome a spring force of the coil springs when opening the home bar door, and the home bar door collides with the opening of the door of the refrigerator compartment due to a restoring force of the coil springs when closing the home bar door, so a noise may be undesirably generated.
The conventional refrigerator has a further problem that the folding connecting arms and the coil springs are exposed to an outside when the home bar door is opened, thus degrading an appearance of the refrigerator, therefore reducing the appeal of the refrigerator to consumers.